The series of recitals at this year’s George Enescu Competition will be opened by Lithuanian cellist David Geringas, who heads the jury’s cello competition section.

Geringas, a cellist, conductor, and founder of the Geringas Chamber Orchestra, has studied under Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatory and won the Gold Medal at the 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition.

He will perform on September 4, at the Romanian Athenaeum, accompanied by pianist Mikhail Mordvinov. The program includes Jean Sibelius’s Malinconia, Op. 20, Edvard Grieg’s Sonata in A minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 36, and three works from the Peer Gynt suites.

At the same time, violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky, the president of George Enescu International Competition’s violin section jury, will deliver a concert alongside cellist Valentin Răduțiu and pianist Lukas Geniušas. The concert, scheduled for September 6 at the Romanian Athenaeum, will cover a program including Schubert’s Piano Sonata in E major, Violin Sonata in A major, D 574, and the Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 99.

With a career spanning more than four decades, Sitkovetsky is known as a violinist and conductor. As a violinist, he recorded more than 40 discs, alongside the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw, and artists such as Colin Davis, Mariss Jansons, Neville Marriner and Yehudi Menuhin. In 1990, he established the New European Strings Chamber Orchestra, gathering string players from the best European ensembles.

A winner of the 2011 George Enescu Competition, Valentin Răduțiu is a principal cellist of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and a professor at the Carl Maria von Weber Conservatory in Dresden. In 2014, he released, alongside Per Rundberg, an album with all of Enescu’s cello and piano works. In 2013, he collaborated with composer and conductor Peter Ruzicka to record Ruzicka’s cello concerto and cello works. Other releases included Haydn, Mozart/Cassadó, C.P.E. Bach with the München Chamber Orchestra (2016), Haydn, and J.Ch. Bach.

In his turn, Geniušas recently offered the first public performances of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in the original and full version. His latest disc, released to five-star reviews from BBC Music and Gramophone, received awards from Diapason and Classica magazines.

The competition takes place in Bucharest between August 31 and September 27. It covers sections on cello, violin, piano, and composition.

(Photo: Alex Damian, courtesy of the organizers)

simona@romania-insider.com